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A review by kandicez
Hood by Emma Donoghue
4.0
This is a book about grief. Nothing else, simply grief, which is never simple and we all feel it at some point. One of the few guarantees in life is that if you live long enough you will lose someone close to you.
The “Hood” of the title refers to the suffix we add to certain nouns to turn them into states of being; motherhood, fatherhood, widowhood, neighborhood, brotherhood, and sisterhood to name a few. Pen, our narrator is the left behind lover of Cara who dies, off page, unexpectedly in a taxi crash coming home from the airport after a trip. I always think death during or at the end of a vacation is doubly sad. Those you’ve left behind said goodbye, yes, but it was the temporary “have fun, I’ll miss you, wish I was coming” sort of goodbye. They’ve had the idea of welcoming you back to keep them going and it’s been snatched.
Pen and Cara live with Cara’s father who is seemingly oblivious to their true relationship. He thinks they are best mates. No one in either young ladies' family knows that the two are actually lovers and that seems even more tragic. Pen, who is a widow in every sense of the word, cannot wear the widowhood weeds. She is unable to grieve in a way appropriate for a lost lover. This not only intensifies her grief over the week that we are with her, but also undermines her sense of self.
This book touched my heart. Donoghue has such a way of conveying feeling that oozes from the page. She isn’t maudlin or purple in her prose, and yet the feelings are still heavy and made me stop reading and just look across the grass and count my blessings occasionally. Pen’s grief made me so very aware of the possibility of my own.
My favorite line was: “My eyes dawdled across the missalette. I had never noticed before that the official title of the ‘Lord have mercy’ prayer was the gracious phrase ‘Invitation to Sorrow’. Hey there, Sorrow, how’ve you been keeping? Come on in. If your bike doesn’t have lights you can always crash on our sofa tonight. Oh, so you’ll be staying a while, Sorrow? Planning to get to know me better? Grand, so. There’s tea in the pot. All”
It just slayed me. That’s the acceptance stage of grief on a page.
The “Hood” of the title refers to the suffix we add to certain nouns to turn them into states of being; motherhood, fatherhood, widowhood, neighborhood, brotherhood, and sisterhood to name a few. Pen, our narrator is the left behind lover of Cara who dies, off page, unexpectedly in a taxi crash coming home from the airport after a trip. I always think death during or at the end of a vacation is doubly sad. Those you’ve left behind said goodbye, yes, but it was the temporary “have fun, I’ll miss you, wish I was coming” sort of goodbye. They’ve had the idea of welcoming you back to keep them going and it’s been snatched.
Pen and Cara live with Cara’s father who is seemingly oblivious to their true relationship. He thinks they are best mates. No one in either young ladies' family knows that the two are actually lovers and that seems even more tragic. Pen, who is a widow in every sense of the word, cannot wear the widowhood weeds. She is unable to grieve in a way appropriate for a lost lover. This not only intensifies her grief over the week that we are with her, but also undermines her sense of self.
This book touched my heart. Donoghue has such a way of conveying feeling that oozes from the page. She isn’t maudlin or purple in her prose, and yet the feelings are still heavy and made me stop reading and just look across the grass and count my blessings occasionally. Pen’s grief made me so very aware of the possibility of my own.
My favorite line was: “My eyes dawdled across the missalette. I had never noticed before that the official title of the ‘Lord have mercy’ prayer was the gracious phrase ‘Invitation to Sorrow’. Hey there, Sorrow, how’ve you been keeping? Come on in. If your bike doesn’t have lights you can always crash on our sofa tonight. Oh, so you’ll be staying a while, Sorrow? Planning to get to know me better? Grand, so. There’s tea in the pot. All”
It just slayed me. That’s the acceptance stage of grief on a page.